Illiberal democratic governments may believe they
have a mandate to act in any way they see fit as long as they hold
regular elections. Lack of liberties such as freedom
of speech and freedom
of assembly make opposition extremely difficult. The rulers may
centralize powers both between branches of the central government
and between central and local government (having no separation
of powers). Television and radio is often controlled by the
state and strongly support the regime.
Non-governmental organizations may face onerous regulations or
simply be prohibited. The regime may use red tape,
economic pressure, or violence against critics.

There is a spectrum of illiberal democracies:
from those who are nearly liberal democracies to those that are
almost openly dictatorships. One proposed
method of determining whether a regime is an illiberal democracy is
by determining whether "it has regular, free, fair, and competitive
elections to fill the principal positions of power in the country,
but it does not qualify as Free in Freedom
House's annual ratings of civil liberties and political
rights."

More recently, scholars such as Steven
Levitsky and Lucan Way
argued that terms like "illiberal democracy" were inappropriate for
some of these states, because the term implies that these regimes
are, at their heart, democracies that have gone wrong. Levitsky and
Way argued that some of these states, such as Serbia under
Slobodan
Milosevic, Zimbabwe, and
post-Soviet Russia, were never
truly democratic and not developing toward democracy, but were
rather tending further toward authoritarian behaviour, despite
having elections (which were sometimes sharply contested). Thus,
Levitsky and Way coined a new term to remove the positive
connotation of democracy from these states and distinguish them
from flawed or developing democracies: competitive
authoritarianism.

In contrast to these disputed examples, a classic
example of an illiberal democracy is the Republic of Singapore.
Conversely, liberal
autocracies are regimes with no elections and that are ruled by
autocratically but have at least some real liberties. Here, a good
example is the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. Both
Hong Kong and Singapore are ethnic Chinese majority city-states and
former British colonies. However, their political evolution has
taken different paths, with Hong Kong residents enjoying the
liberal freedoms of the United Kingdom, but, as a colony, without
the power to choose its leaders. This contradictory state of
affairs was inherited by the
People's Republic of China when it resumed control of the
territory in 1997. In contrast, Singapore acquired full
independence, first from Britain and then from Malaysia in the
1960s. At that time, it was structured as a relatively liberal
democracy, albeit with some internal security laws that allowed for
detention without trial. Over time, as Singapore's Peoples Action
Party government consolidated power in the 1960s and 1970s, it
enacted a number of laws and policies that curtailed constitutional
freedoms (such as the right to assemble or form associations), and
extended its influence over the media, unions, NGOs and academia.
Consequently, although technically free and fair multi-party
elections are regularly conducted, the political realities in
Singapore (including fear and self-censorship) make participation
in opposition politics extremely difficult, leaving the dominant
ruling party as the only credible option at the polls.